


Counting On (Two Hands)

by marauder_in_warblerland



Category: Glee
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 12:54:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauder_in_warblerland/pseuds/marauder_in_warblerland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“He’s been here, or some version of here, before.” In a church basement, Kurt considers grief and the objects that define us.  [Written before "The Quarterback"]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting On (Two Hands)

He knows this feeling, like he’s swimming in air. When he tries to turn or walk, the atmosphere tugs at his skin and forces him to a crawl. People keep rushing past— Uncles, Aunts, old teachers— but he can’t keep up. As he steps into the church basement, he could swear that there are two of him, one stuck in this slow, frozen body and another, luckier version floating high above the crowd. _That_ Kurt isn’t swimming or drowning; he’s laughing because the whole thing is just too ridiculous to take seriously. 

Of course Finn isn’t dead. That’s impossible, so the other Kurt floats above the hired help fixing flower arrangements and the clump of McKinley students huddled in the corner trying to come up with something to say. They won’t. This he knows. Or at least they won’t come up with anything that won’t make him want to rip the lips off of their faces for trying. 

He thinks that he knows this feeling because he’s been here, or some version of _here_ , before. He’s had to swim in air in a funeral home and watch his father smile with watery eyes, but that was so many years ago. He remembers crowds and softened voices and idiotic condolence cards but he still sees it all through eight-year-old eyes. The angle is all off. His muscle memory no longer fits his muscles and he keeps running into jarring moments that force him to face the gap between then and now: between Kurt without a mother and Kurt without a … It had happened in New York, when he’d collapsed against the kitchen counter, gasping for air and pressing the cell phone against his ear. They hadn’t had cell phones when his mom had died, he’d thought. It was just a random connection in the middle of a rising numbness, and he’d almost laughed at its intrusion. Like he said, ridiculous.

It happens again, that feeling of dissonance, as he forces his body into the church basement, already filled with aimless well wishers. Twelve years ago, he knows where he would have been. It isn’t the same basement or the same church, but he spots a carpeted corner just close enough to watch the crowd and knows that that’s where he would have sat, curled into his own little frame. Back then, he could just be the “other Kurt,” observer of other peoples’ grief. He could sit in his corner or on his metal folding chair, legs dangling, and watch all the adults collapse around him. He could spend hours trying to make sense of it all. No one had expected him to say or do anything, except be a living reminder of everything his mother had left behind. 

And now… Kurt muscles through his own inertia and walks to the buffet table. He has work to do. The napkins need to be checked and the bars need… something. He’d requested Finn’s favorites, the Andes mint things with the creme sandwiched between two layers of chocolate, but he isn’t sure that he can trust the catering company at the church to do them justice. He’d made a batch of his own just in case. Last night he’d dumped ingredients into a bowl with more force than necessary and watched as egg white dripped down the walls. The bars are ready and waiting in the car, next to the fanny pack full of stupid gifts Finn had gotten from the Glee club and a box of pictures that Kurt hadn’t been able to bring himself to carry into the church. It all just seems too intimate and too soon. This crowd of people shuffling in towards the lemonade and the seven-layer bars, they’re so needy. 

He knows, or at least the other Kurt knows that they have to mourn too, that these vultures have  holes in their futures that need rituals and chocolate just as much as he does, but right now he can’t give them everything they want. He can give them his frenzy and ugly cookies. He can give them soft smiles that don’t reach his eyes and the kind reassurance that their presence is, at the very least, not unwelcome. He can do hugs and arm grabs and even empty promises of heavenly bliss, but he cannot hand over a box of stuff, HIS stuff, for them to pet like pieces of the cross. 

Kurt turns back to the buffet and starts rearranging the plates. Maybe if he mixes them up well, the crowd won’t notice the macadamia nut cookies with the burnt bottoms or the pumpkin cake that’s fallen in the middle. Perhaps Tina will see that he’s busy and stop asking him to go out to the car to bring in all of the stuff he’d promised to drop off at the welcome table. Maybe no one will even notice that the welcome table is half empty because all of that shit is still waiting in Carol’s trunk, like a time bomb.

In retrospect, getting the box into the car hadn’t been any easier. Just after they’d heard, Sam offered  to pack up  pictures and things to display at the reception. Since then, the bulging box had sat on the living room floor, waiting for him to do something, anything. He’d still had a day, nearly twenty hours, before he and that box needed to be at the church, so he let it wait and watch. Blaine had offered to help him carry the box out to the car, or to carry it by himself. He probably would have offered to set the whole mess on fire if Kurt had suggested that might make anyone smile, but it wasn’t time yet. He still had 16 hours before those boxes had to be real, so Kurt just shook his head, like a tremor in the stillness, and Blaine went back to sorting condolence cards. They’d cleaned and reorganized and sorted in sync for hours, in an unspoken dance, because Blaine needed to hold on to something normal and Kurt needed more arms and hands to make everything better. When the box finally made its way out to the car, it was still hours before anyone needed to be anywhere. Blaine watched from the entryway as Kurt heaved the lot into the trunk on his own because, goddamn it, he could.  

As he eased himself out the the driveway and down past the usual houses, he allowed his mind to empty like a broken bottle. His shoulders relaxed for the first time in days, until he realized where the car was going. Newer muscle memory, built up over four years of requirement put him on the path to McKinley and Kurt couldn’t bring himself to fix the mistake. He didn’t believe in fate or angels or messages from above, but if this is where his right foot needed to go today then that’s where he was going. He and his box of crap didn’t have anywhere else they needed to be. 

Somehow, he found himself outside the auditorium, although he couldn’t piece together how he’d gotten there. The memories had grown prematurely spotty, like old VHS tapes left to the elements, all open gaps and frayed edges. Kurt pushed through red curtains and walked down the right-side aisle. Add some music, he thought, and he’d be at the beginning of a classic competition duet, but no. That had never happened here, not for him. He wasn’t the sort of guy who entered from the back singing half of a love song and he thought he’d reconciled himself to that fact a long time ago. But then there was a phone call and a plane ride and church caterers and things just kept bubbling up to the surface, things that he’d long since given up trying to control. 

Kurt walked down the aisle, feeling his way through old paths in the carpet, and as he walked he dug a dirty scarf from the pocket of his trench. The scarf clashed with everything in his closet. Its burnt orange shimmer cried out for an exotic marketplace in the middle of Ohio, but he’d been counting its fringes all day. Trashy, it might have been, and garish too, but that endless counting had gotten him through a twenty-hour stand-off with a cardboard box. 

He’d found the scarf the night before, when he wandered into Finn’s old room only to find Sam kneeling between two piles, one marked “yes” and a much larger pile marked “no.” He hadn’t needed to ask. The smaller pile included all of Finn’s photo-ready moments, like shots at nationals and his first pay-stub from Sheets-N-Things. That pile held every flash of leadership potential ready for a reception display, but the other pile … oh that one had everything. Kurt watched from the doorway as Sam tossed C- book reports, unused gift certificates, and boob drawings on the larger pile until a flash of orange caught his eye. 

At first, he couldn’t pinpoint its place in his memory, until he held it up and saw the light flash through like an old movie, like Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper in Morocco. Like the perfect balance of the muted and the theatrical. Kurt clenched the scarf and shut his eyes against a version of Finn that wouldn’t be going anywhere near his funeral. This week there would be no “faggy couch-covers” or “faggy lamps” and there certainly wouldn’t be any sign of the young man capable of throwing those words into the universe. 

At the time, in Finn’s old bedroom, Kurt had pocketed the scarf without a word. Sam hadn’t asked why and, if he had, Kurt isn’t sure he could have answered. After their “altercation”, Kurt’s aesthetic hadn’t lasted long. Even with his father’s blessing, the space had left a bad taste in his mouth, so it all came down. Almost everything had gone to Goodwill or Ebay, but he couldn’t bear to part with the wall hangings or the scarves. They spent years balled up in the back of the hall closet until Finn had kindly, and awkwardly, helped chuck ‘em to the curb. At least, that’s what Kurt thought had happened. He’d seen the box by the side of the road, filled with orange and red, but apparently one little scarf escaped. 

Back in the auditorium, Kurt walked towards the stage and stretched the scarf between his fists, testing what strength remained in its tired fibers. He wondered how easily it would tear…  And he thought about Finn. He wondered if he would even recognize the Finn who would be eulogized at the funeral and celebrated at the reception. THAT Finn would never slander his step-brother. He wouldn’t dream of outing a friend or making up rumors or ruining a choir competition out of sheer bone-headed affection, and Kurt couldn’t imagine anything more heartbreaking. 

That stupid scarf had come to represent everything about Finn Hudson that wouldn’t be allowed to show its ugly face in his official story.  His entire life had been scrubbed and polished until there was nothing left but a shiny, singing, football star. The new history was bright and easy and left no room at all for Kurt Hummel. Nothing about their relationship had ever been “easy”; eventually, it was beautiful and resilient, but it was never easy. How dare they create a mannequin for their grief, how dare they cut the casual, childish cruelty out of Finn’s story, and— most of all— how dare they minimize this complicated and deeply good man. Yes, he was the boy who could say awful things, but he was also the man who NEVER let himself forget. This was a man who dug a wrinkled old scarf out of the trash so that he would never forget a moment of weakness and so that it would never happen again. How, in the face of that life the universe could expect him to bury this man— 

Suddenly, Kurt realized that someone in the auditorium was screaming. He couldn’t hear words, just violent sound cutting through the rafters. He paused, scarf balled in a fist, and listened to the high keening wail until he realized that it was his own voice echoing in his ears. He was crying and screaming and he couldn’t stop because he couldn’t find a way to make this ok. No matter how many closets he cleaned or how many bars he baked, Finn was still going to be dead, eyes staring at nothing, and he was still going to have the sickening feeling that they were all celebrating the shadow of an incredible man. 

Somehow, Kurt found his way back to the car and the car found its way to the church. He prepared himself to be a kind host and straightened his tie. Now, he wipes cookie crumbs off of the buffet table and fingers the scarf still in his pocket. In the end, he hadn’t been able to tear it. It wasn’t as fragile as it looked. If he calculates correctly, he has twenty minutes before he absolutely must get the box from the car. He has twenty minutes before his Finn becomes their Finn, so he swims and floats and counts down to nothing. 


End file.
